Color Laser Multifunction for Superior Results Color imageClass MF8170c Color Laser Copier/Printer/Scanner/Fax The Color imageClass MF8170c will generate impressive, cost-effective color documents that will elevate your company's professional appearance. Your color copies and prints will be made at 4 pages-per-minute, and black and white documents will print and copy at 16 pages-per-minute. With a 375-sheet total paper capacity and the 50-sheet Automatic Document Feeder, copying, printing and faxing are done with ease. Your scanned image color will be true to the original. You will achieve remarkable tone-on-tone clarity with 1200 x 2400 dpi 48-bit* CCD technology. Scanning text is also simple and accurate with the included OCR (optical character recognition) software. When your office needs a single business machine that produces documents with beautiful color and speed, meeting the demands of today's fast-paced environment, choose the Color imageCLASS MF8170c. It provides outstanding Color Copying, Color Printing, Faxing, Color Scanning and Network Capabilities for printing and faxing. It is the essential color laser solution for every small office that demands professional results.
1 Still better off with separate units, but a nice toy
The Canon MF8170c is the very first AIO (All-In-One) fax-scan-copy-printer to feature color laser printing at its pricepoint and without the 500 lb bulk of a standalone copier/printer. While you can probably both save money and increase quality and speed with separate units doing the same task, after buying my first AIO HP OfficeJet G85 several years ago I was hooked and promised myself never to go back to the copy-by-scan-and-print method. The color print speed, noise, and lack of certain features are worth knocking a star off, but if you can afford it and don't need certain higher-end features its well worth it for home office use.
The MF8170c is a heavy (ships at 106 lbs - 2-day shipping on this would pay for an Amazon Prime membership!), big (25" x 20" x 20"), relatively complicated looking unit but is a relative pussycat to get going by USB - just install drivers from the CD. Ethernet connections weren't as easy; it and my Netgear WGR614 router didn't like each other at first, but once I figured the problem was the printer didn't have an IP address, the installation software let me solve that problem and I was off and running.
B&W print quality is in general quite crisp, color print quality very good and both well above that of the HP 4650n I used at my prior job. This is not a photo printer, however; I found using both copy and glossy paper my G85 substantially outperformed it even when the MF8170c was set in photo mode. Fax and copy functionality and quality were ok, although it feels like my old G85 had more features. Where this lacks is in scanning. Scan quality is actually pretty good, but you can't scan through the network and have to have a USB connection (and drivers). Annoying.
Where I knock a star off (and would probably knock a second off if it weren't a unique item) is three fold. First, no power switch means even in energy saver mode this has fans going; it's not hugely loud (compared to my late lamented airplane-engine-sounding 15-year-old Epson ActionLaser II) but it's annoying and takes forever to turn off and warm up. Second, for a 2005 printer color prints like its 2000 at a rated 4 ppm after a 1 minute warmup. This isn't surprising given Canon quietly skimped on RAM. The printer has only a measly 24MB, a fact convieniently omitted from the available technical specifications and one I only found out about by looking around on the web browser based internal monitor. Finally, I really don't like the fact that I can't buy a duplex (dual-sided) printing collator, although the design makes me hope there should be some accessories coming out shortly.
If you have more than 2-3 people who need to do routine color printing or scanning this isn't your machine. I'd pick up one of the networked color laser Lexmarks and a good monochrome AIO unit instead. However, for home office use this is state of the art. I like its large bulk in the corner of my home office even with its limitations.
2 Review of Canon's New MF8170c All in One Copier
This unit is so new, it is hard to find in any stores, much less set up as a demo. I bought sight unseen based on features and Canon's good name. I was not disappointed.
Assembly took about one hour, including installing 5 toner cartridges (1 large black and 4 color toners). Software set up went perfectly. The manual and instruction cards were very well written.
The first color copy on plain paper looked really good. Better than what my Epson 2200 color inkjet would produce. I had some old glossy laser paper and then printed on that. Not a big improvement over plain. Images are a bit grainy and some banding in large color areas. I then printed a digital photo off my computer. Not a vast improvement over the copy function image. Same results where plain paper looks great (for a plain paper copy) and the glossy image was not near as good as decent inkjet can produce. I have not scanned or faxed, yet with this machine.
Final thoughts: the unit takes a long time to make the first color copy, probably a full 60 seconds. The unit has NO OFF switch, just an energy saver button. Hence, the unit is always on. The unit will sit for hours after copying making fan noises. Don't sleep in the same room as this unit. Much later, it goes into true sleep mode and stays quiet. Even making black and white copies takes a considerable amount of time for the first copy. Images in B&W rival those of my HP Laserjet 4000--a machine with reportedly better resolution. Don't expect photo quality from this laser copier. You will need a good inkjet for that. But for business or home letters with small graphics or small photos in a newsletter, this unit does an amazing job. I will sell my HP 4000 but keep my Epson ink jet.
